Hsain Ilahiane
Biographic Data
| ID | 519877 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hsain Ilahiane |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hsain |
| FAMILY NAME | Ilahiane |
| SIGNATURE | ILAHIANE H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Iowa State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Made for Maids
In this article, I am concerned with how female domestic workers use the mobile phone to expand employment opportunities in the shantytowns of urban Morocco. I examine how mobile telephony is a resource for human agency and action, not just a force for culture change. Second, I describe how mobile phone use has resulted in higher revenues by enlarging the circle of economic activity and by enabling supplementary informal income-generating possibi…
Economic Anthropology in the Middle East and North Africa
In this introduction to this special issue on economic anthropology in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), I provide a short background on what economic anthropology is, its major debates since the 1950s, and its practice in the MENA region. I also summarise and bring together the articles that cover a range of different and emergent themes from social media in the belly dance industry through inflation and lotteries to startup cultures and …
Mobile Phones, Farmers, and the Unsettling of Geertz's Moroccan Suq/Bazaar Economy
In this article, I first examine the ways Moroccan smallholder farmers deploy mobile phones to revise their relationships with markets and roving middlemen. Second, based on a mixed method of participant observation and survey data, I claim that mobile phone use has transformed farmers' economic behaviour, resulting in deeper market participation and the gradual undoing of the role of middlemen in the agricultural value chain. Finally, I contend …
Introduction
In April 2015, the Society of Economic Anthropology held its annual conference, hosted at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, to discuss the theme "Technologies and the Transformation of Economies." The articles in this volume examine the multifaceted relationship between people and technology across different societies and at different periods in the history of social and economic transformations. This introduction to the volume (1) contextua…
Mediating Purity
In this paper, I first argue that debates over what constitutes riba (usury) and interest engender what I call anxiety over ethical and spiritual purity. Second, I contend that this anxiety also reveals how some people are forced into financial bricolage to recalibrate the principles of Islamic ethics and morality with the ambiguous realities of everyday life and western banking. Finally, I claim that the concept of riba embodies an elaborating s…
Catenating the local and the global in Morocco
Over a decade ago, a major intellectual shift occurred in global development thinking, stressing local and ‘bottom-up’ market-driven approaches to poverty alleviation over top-down, statist planning. Many principles of this shift are embedded in a development approach referred to as the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. At the same time, some of the claims and outcomes associated with such approaches have met with scathing critiques. I examine some of the…
Mobile Phone Use, Bricolage, and the Transformation of Social and Economic Ties of Micro-Entrepreneurs in Urban Morocco
In this article, I explore ways in which urban micro-entrepreneurs use the mobile phone as a tool to organize a newly networked work life. Based on ethnographic and survey evidence, first, I argue that mobile phone use expands the productive opportunities of certain types of activities by enhancing social networks, reducing risks associated with employment seeking, and enabling bricolage or freelance service work, leading to higher incomes. Secon…
Joutia
This paper provides an ethnographic and cultural analysis of the 'informal sector' in Morocco. In this age of globalisation, no firm can afford to ignore the vibrant informal sector that makes up the bulk of GDP in many developing economies. And yet, the informal sector is routinely misunderstood and mythologised as 'pimps, drug dealers, counterfeiters and pirates', and is particularly despised by the high tech industry. Based on fieldwork, the a…
Differentiating Livelihood Strategies among the Luo and Kipsigis People in Western Kenya
Rural communities of sub-Saharan Africa are under increasing adaptive pressure resulting from decline in the quality of land resources. To increase food, generate income, and safeguard against risks and shocks, families are engaging in multiple livelihood strategies. This study was conducted to: 1) evaluate livelihood strategies; 2) examine the dynamic diversification process in the agrarian and non-agrarian continuum; and 3) investigate how type…
Ict4d ⇒ Ict4x
With more than five billion people, large corporations have expressed non-trivial interest in "emerging markets" as potential future sources of revenue. We in this community of ethnographic praxis, are privileged to move with some ease between corporate board rooms and people's living rooms around the world Yet, our messages and meanings that might lead to positive action are hampered by both our own language - that of development - and the ways …
Commentry
Sources for the Socio-Economic Study of Rural Morocco
This paper explores the utility of 19th- and 20th-century taxation and court records as tools for mapping the changing social topography of rural Morocco. Little serious work has been done with such records to date, and it is hoped that this paper will encourage more researchers to use this material. 1 As a subset of the Moroccan official record, legal and tax records obviously have an epistemological character differing from that of private corr…
The Break-up of the Ksar
In spite of the French colonial intrusion, up to the 1950s, resource management in Saharan villages constituted what some have called the syndrome of collectivity. The syndrome of collectivity was the product of three interrelated factors: the Ksar, or a nucleated settlement pattern, ethnicity, and village-drawn constitutions. Since Independence, however, the Ksar's compact and nucleated settlement began to break up. I argue that the break-up of …
The Social Mobility of the Haratine and the Re-Working of Bourdieu's Habitus on the Saharan Frontier, Morocco
In this article, I examine the practical relevance of Bourdieu's notion of Habitus in understanding the relationship between the acquisition of land and the transformation of political and social relations of subordination in the stratified communities of southern Morocco. First, I claim that the acquisition of land by the Haratine, a subordinate and low-status ethnic group, means more than just a simple economic transaction, and land serves as t…
Estevan De Dorantes, the Moor or the Slave? The other Moroccan explorer of New Spain
Unlike Ibn Battuta and other medieval travellers and explorers who rose to fame and still fire up much imagination and scholarship in North Africa today, Estevan, the first Moor or Black to set foot in the Southwest of the USA, is virtually unknown in his native land, Morocco. Although much has been written about his sense of adventure and exploration on this side of the Atlantic, the historical literature remains deficient in documenting the con…
The Berber Agdal Institution
The A. examines the historical organization of the agdal institution and identifies its constraints and opportunities among Berbers of southeast Morocco. There are many types of agdals at different levels of Berber social organization and conflict is ever present. Analysis of the agdal arrangements for the communal use of pasture demonstrates how pastoral groups manipulate kinship and historical opportunities to negotiate order, grass, and subsis…
The Berber Agdal Institution
The A. examines the historical organization of the agdal institution and identifies its constraints and opportunities among Berbers of southeast Morocco. There are many types of agdals at different levels of Berber social organization and conflict is ever present. Analysis of the agdal arrangements for the communal use of pasture demonstrates how pastoral groups manipulate kinship and historical opportunities to negotiate order, grass, and subsis…
Joutia
This paper provides an ethnographic and cultural analysis of the 'informal sector' in Morocco. In this age of globalisation, no firm can afford to ignore the vibrant informal sector that makes up the bulk of GDP in many developing economies. And yet, the informal sector is routinely misunderstood and mythologised as 'pimps, drug dealers, counterfeiters and pirates', and is particularly despised by the high tech industry. Based on fieldwork, the a…
The Social Mobility of the Haratine and the Re-Working of Bourdieu's Habitus on the Saharan Frontier, Morocco
In this article, I examine the practical relevance of Bourdieu's notion of Habitus in understanding the relationship between the acquisition of land and the transformation of political and social relations of subordination in the stratified communities of southern Morocco. First, I claim that the acquisition of land by the Haratine, a subordinate and low-status ethnic group, means more than just a simple economic transaction, and land serves as t…
Estevan De Dorantes, the Moor or the Slave? The other Moroccan explorer of New Spain
Unlike Ibn Battuta and other medieval travellers and explorers who rose to fame and still fire up much imagination and scholarship in North Africa today, Estevan, the first Moor or Black to set foot in the Southwest of the USA, is virtually unknown in his native land, Morocco. Although much has been written about his sense of adventure and exploration on this side of the Atlantic, the historical literature remains deficient in documenting the con…
Introduction
In April 2015, the Society of Economic Anthropology held its annual conference, hosted at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, to discuss the theme "Technologies and the Transformation of Economies." The articles in this volume examine the multifaceted relationship between people and technology across different societies and at different periods in the history of social and economic transformations. This introduction to the volume (1) contextua…
The Break-up of the Ksar
In spite of the French colonial intrusion, up to the 1950s, resource management in Saharan villages constituted what some have called the syndrome of collectivity. The syndrome of collectivity was the product of three interrelated factors: the Ksar, or a nucleated settlement pattern, ethnicity, and village-drawn constitutions. Since Independence, however, the Ksar's compact and nucleated settlement began to break up. I argue that the break-up of …
Made for Maids
In this article, I am concerned with how female domestic workers use the mobile phone to expand employment opportunities in the shantytowns of urban Morocco. I examine how mobile telephony is a resource for human agency and action, not just a force for culture change. Second, I describe how mobile phone use has resulted in higher revenues by enlarging the circle of economic activity and by enabling supplementary informal income-generating possibi…
Catenating the local and the global in Morocco
Over a decade ago, a major intellectual shift occurred in global development thinking, stressing local and ‘bottom-up’ market-driven approaches to poverty alleviation over top-down, statist planning. Many principles of this shift are embedded in a development approach referred to as the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. At the same time, some of the claims and outcomes associated with such approaches have met with scathing critiques. I examine some of the…
The Berber Agdal Institution
The A. examines the historical organization of the agdal institution and identifies its constraints and opportunities among Berbers of southeast Morocco. There are many types of agdals at different levels of Berber social organization and conflict is ever present. Analysis of the agdal arrangements for the communal use of pasture demonstrates how pastoral groups manipulate kinship and historical opportunities to negotiate order, grass, and subsis…
Estevan De Dorantes, the Moor or the Slave? The other Moroccan explorer of New Spain
Unlike Ibn Battuta and other medieval travellers and explorers who rose to fame and still fire up much imagination and scholarship in North Africa today, Estevan, the first Moor or Black to set foot in the Southwest of the USA, is virtually unknown in his native land, Morocco. Although much has been written about his sense of adventure and exploration on this side of the Atlantic, the historical literature remains deficient in documenting the con…
Sources for the Socio-Economic Study of Rural Morocco
This paper explores the utility of 19th- and 20th-century taxation and court records as tools for mapping the changing social topography of rural Morocco. Little serious work has been done with such records to date, and it is hoped that this paper will encourage more researchers to use this material. 1 As a subset of the Moroccan official record, legal and tax records obviously have an epistemological character differing from that of private corr…
The Break-up of the Ksar
In spite of the French colonial intrusion, up to the 1950s, resource management in Saharan villages constituted what some have called the syndrome of collectivity. The syndrome of collectivity was the product of three interrelated factors: the Ksar, or a nucleated settlement pattern, ethnicity, and village-drawn constitutions. Since Independence, however, the Ksar's compact and nucleated settlement began to break up. I argue that the break-up of …
The Social Mobility of the Haratine and the Re-Working of Bourdieu's Habitus on the Saharan Frontier, Morocco
In this article, I examine the practical relevance of Bourdieu's notion of Habitus in understanding the relationship between the acquisition of land and the transformation of political and social relations of subordination in the stratified communities of southern Morocco. First, I claim that the acquisition of land by the Haratine, a subordinate and low-status ethnic group, means more than just a simple economic transaction, and land serves as t…
Commentry
Differentiating Livelihood Strategies among the Luo and Kipsigis People in Western Kenya
Rural communities of sub-Saharan Africa are under increasing adaptive pressure resulting from decline in the quality of land resources. To increase food, generate income, and safeguard against risks and shocks, families are engaging in multiple livelihood strategies. This study was conducted to: 1) evaluate livelihood strategies; 2) examine the dynamic diversification process in the agrarian and non-agrarian continuum; and 3) investigate how type…
Ict4d ⇒ Ict4x
With more than five billion people, large corporations have expressed non-trivial interest in "emerging markets" as potential future sources of revenue. We in this community of ethnographic praxis, are privileged to move with some ease between corporate board rooms and people's living rooms around the world Yet, our messages and meanings that might lead to positive action are hampered by both our own language - that of development - and the ways …
Joutia
This paper provides an ethnographic and cultural analysis of the 'informal sector' in Morocco. In this age of globalisation, no firm can afford to ignore the vibrant informal sector that makes up the bulk of GDP in many developing economies. And yet, the informal sector is routinely misunderstood and mythologised as 'pimps, drug dealers, counterfeiters and pirates', and is particularly despised by the high tech industry. Based on fieldwork, the a…
Mobile Phone Use, Bricolage, and the Transformation of Social and Economic Ties of Micro-Entrepreneurs in Urban Morocco
In this article, I explore ways in which urban micro-entrepreneurs use the mobile phone as a tool to organize a newly networked work life. Based on ethnographic and survey evidence, first, I argue that mobile phone use expands the productive opportunities of certain types of activities by enhancing social networks, reducing risks associated with employment seeking, and enabling bricolage or freelance service work, leading to higher incomes. Secon…
Catenating the local and the global in Morocco
Over a decade ago, a major intellectual shift occurred in global development thinking, stressing local and ‘bottom-up’ market-driven approaches to poverty alleviation over top-down, statist planning. Many principles of this shift are embedded in a development approach referred to as the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. At the same time, some of the claims and outcomes associated with such approaches have met with scathing critiques. I examine some of the…
Mediating Purity
In this paper, I first argue that debates over what constitutes riba (usury) and interest engender what I call anxiety over ethical and spiritual purity. Second, I contend that this anxiety also reveals how some people are forced into financial bricolage to recalibrate the principles of Islamic ethics and morality with the ambiguous realities of everyday life and western banking. Finally, I claim that the concept of riba embodies an elaborating s…
Introduction
In April 2015, the Society of Economic Anthropology held its annual conference, hosted at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, to discuss the theme "Technologies and the Transformation of Economies." The articles in this volume examine the multifaceted relationship between people and technology across different societies and at different periods in the history of social and economic transformations. This introduction to the volume (1) contextua…
Made for Maids
In this article, I am concerned with how female domestic workers use the mobile phone to expand employment opportunities in the shantytowns of urban Morocco. I examine how mobile telephony is a resource for human agency and action, not just a force for culture change. Second, I describe how mobile phone use has resulted in higher revenues by enlarging the circle of economic activity and by enabling supplementary informal income-generating possibi…
Economic Anthropology in the Middle East and North Africa
In this introduction to this special issue on economic anthropology in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), I provide a short background on what economic anthropology is, its major debates since the 1950s, and its practice in the MENA region. I also summarise and bring together the articles that cover a range of different and emergent themes from social media in the belly dance industry through inflation and lotteries to startup cultures and …
Mobile Phones, Farmers, and the Unsettling of Geertz's Moroccan Suq/Bazaar Economy
In this article, I first examine the ways Moroccan smallholder farmers deploy mobile phones to revise their relationships with markets and roving middlemen. Second, based on a mixed method of participant observation and survey data, I claim that mobile phone use has transformed farmers' economic behaviour, resulting in deeper market participation and the gradual undoing of the role of middlemen in the agricultural value chain. Finally, I contend …
Sociology (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Economics (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Engineering (4 works) · History (4 works) · Law (4 works)